IntDPD: International Platform of Movements of Direct and Participatory Democracy

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Friday, January 10, 2014

1 Joám Evans Pim (Partido da Terra) http://www.partidodaterra.net (Galiza)
"Direct
and participatory democracy are not the same thing. The concept of
direct democracy in the US (simply having referendums, initiatives and
recall in the context of parliamentarism) is also different from a more
literal meaning. Therefore, it is difficult to reply.
But, the best economic system for a direct democracy would be the system that the assembly of citizens decides :-)
In
my personal view, Gandhian Economics of self-sufficiency would be the
most connected with the logic of self-government of small sovereign
assemblies, but that is certainly not the only option.
Here is an explanation of why (Google translate
from Portuguese): http://www.partidodaterra.net/noticia/gandhi-na-eira/"

2 David Ding (www.thrivenz.org.nz) Thrive NZ (New Zealand)
"In
context of the people being empowered to co-create society together, it
ultimately means they are able to remove the obstacles and barriers
preventing them from Thriving, the economic system is probably the
greatest obstacle modern society faces at this time.
For
a society whose singularity of purpose is to Thrive, the success of
government can be viewed as how efficiently and effectively people can
access the things they need and want in order to Thrive. In this context
fiat currency can no longer exist as it creates gross imbalance between
the value of goods and services available in a nation vs. what is
available in the money supply that can be spent and is not servicing
debt. So for money to perform its role in facilitating the exchange of
goods and services effectively we must remove incentives for anyone to
hoard it and ensure it is not viewed as a commodity independent of the
goods and services it was designed to facilitate the trade of. As we all
know people don’t need a piece of paper with numbers printed on it in
order to Thrive and idle money sitting in a bank earning interest cannot
being spent in the economy producing the things that people need and
want.
In order to remove the debt based model it is also
critical for a nation reclaim sovereignty over their own currency. For
example any government that relies on the IMF or similar to increase
their money supply is creating huge dependency with massive levels of
debt and interest to repay by tax payers/profits from state owned
enterprises etc. The IMF know that any nation that chooses to claim
sovereignty over their currency can’t print billions of dollars to repay
the immense levels of debt due to the inflationary impact of flooding
the market with their currency which gives them immense power. So for a
nation to release themselves from this dependency they must consider
debt relief as an option. In return they will be free of the onerous
expectations of the IMF who are heavily involved in the direction of
many nations in the world. A private company having the power to print
money when a government cannot makes no sense I’m sure you will agree.
Once
a nation has relieved themselves from debt they can then print money
and spend it into the economy in multiple different ways that will keep
inflation in check as long as they maintain a balance between the amount
of spendable money available in the money supply vs the value of goods
and services available. The immense benefit here is that when the
government invests money in developing industries that produce goods and
services, the economy grows, it creates more jobs, there is more money
in the money supply being spent stimulating economic activity and of
course more goods and services are produced. This model mirrors the
evolutionary process of a thriving species found in nature. (Everything
Thrive New Zealand is presenting is aligned with Natural Law by the
way.)
This is obviously a massive topic and there are
other necessary adjustments that must be made, including complementary
currencies and the development of a balanced constitution/bill of
rights. Our party – Thrive New Zealand is developing proposed policy and
implementation of this model as we speak and will gladly share it with
any international political parties that are similarly aligned. We are
also working on a new written constitution that we are floating to the
people of NZ and inviting them to contribute towards to ensure it is of
the people and for the people. It is our goal for this to be run
alongside Common Law."

3. Rui Martins (www.MaisDemocracia.org) +D = Mais Democracia (Portugal)
"In my view, in a truly and real participatory democracy (or "Democracy 2.0") the economy must have also participatory aspects.
Without
that, the democracy will never be complete and full, and the
overwhelming power of the ruling 1% will supersede the democratic power,
as we can observe today in most of the western countries of the world.
There are many ways to close this circle:
1.
Develop self-management tools and procedures, like those already
running enterprise like Mondragon (Basque Country) or several
cooperative enterprises (USA).
2. Research, develop and implement the concepts of Participatory economics (Parecon).
Those
2 ways, together with a focus on Local Economies and Local Currencies,
in the models of the economist E. F. Schumacher and currently promoted
by the E. F. Schumacher Society, can be a strong and essential support
for a complete Participatory Democracy.

"In
a DD, being that individuals and not parties will decide upon all law,
isn't it obvious that DD isn't within the left/right spectrum and that
only parties are?DD is anti-partisan and so does not
occupy the same political dimension - partisan politics divides us [and
starts ALL civil wars] where DD unites.Isn't this the
point on what we're all supposed to be working on? Replacing the
partisan political system with a people-based political system?The
fact that this comes-up as an issue/question indicates that some [in
their naivety] believe that 'representative' politicians will bring in
DD. I can tell you from my own direct experience of working with them
that this is the last thing they will ever do and, isn't it obvious why?Pasted from our site:MP
Anne Widdecombe has stated that she would "never let majority public
opinion voiced on my website influence my parliamentary votes." and she
also states; "I would never let voters make decisions upon policy
implementation." Before realising who he was talking with, MP George
Galloway told the PA founder directly that "Direct democracy is the best
way for the country to go!" adding "You could get rid of all us lot
too." confirming that we can have what hypocritical politicians
themselves admit is best for us but, only when it doesn't compromise
what's best for them.David Cameron recently remove any mention of even using technology simply to improve comms between reps and voters:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WZ158KkeT0&feature=youtu.beJust
as the ones who said "It's okay I have nothing to hide." have now let
in the state surveillance, the ones among us who think DD can happen
under Rrep Dem are making us weak and vulnerable.Do you
guys really think that Switzerland, Iceland, EU Initiative [for
example] are DD? If you do, you've already bought into the propaganda of
the reps who want to control any aspect of public participation and so
you do us and DD a great disservice.Do not confuse
public participation with DD because they are not the same by any
measure and all the reps want to do is to make people think that DD is
part of Rep Dem [so they can control land tame it] but this can never be
true [for obvious reasons].Also, in both the UK and
US, the pattern now clearly shows that public proposals that get voted
upon in the UK Parliament and the US Senate, are proposals which
politicians have already scheduled to vote on - what does this tell you?'Public participation' under Rep Dem is a wholesale scam."

"I
like Cosmin’s comment about how people might garden the growth of new
methodologies. And he asks: how do we disseminate to the masses the idea
that they are powerful and can use their power (my words)?… My answer
is that you facilitate them to experience their collective power.”

Twenty
three years ago I developed a new methodology called the “Wisdom
Council” for sparking people to come together as a powerful “We the
People.” See www.WiseDemocracy.org.
And it’s now starting to gain traction. I hope you will become familiar
with it as a possible way of addressing society’s big problems.

Yesterday I returned from a conference in Austria called “Surfing Democracy,”
where the Wisdom Council was a main focus. This is the second
conference in the past two years arising from the successful application
of the Wisdom Council in Vorarlberg, Austria, the Westernmost state of
Austria. Six years ago a government Office of Future Related Issues
discovered the Wisdom Council and started convening them. They have
experienced such amazing success in solving difficult public issues,
involving citizens, and shifting the public conversation to be more
collaborative that they convened this FREE conference to people from
anywhere in the world to come learn how they are using this and other
new approaches. They have even convinced politicians … unanimous from
all four parties … to change the state Constitution to include the
Wisdom Council. And now nearby states are planning the same thing.

I
think true democracy is something like this … where all the people
come together in respect, face their collective problems, creatively
determine answers that work for everyone, and then provide leadership
to government in implementing the people’s will. I think the Wisdom
Council can approximate this. The actual change to the
constitution is to include a focus on "participative democracy" as well
as "direct democracy" and "representative democracy." There are three
resolutions explaining "participative democracy" that mention the Wisdom
Council directly: 1) There will be two statewide Wisdom Councils each
year on topics chosen by government. The governor chooses one and
political parties take turns choosing the other. 2) The citizens can
spark a state-sponsored Wisdom Council simply by submitting a topic with
only 1000 signatures supporting that topic. 3) Government will
officially respond to any points Wisdom Councils raise that are directed
to government."

8/10 David Ding (www.thrivenz.org.nz) Thrive NZ (New Zealand)"Any
balanced structure of representative governance that allows for top
down and bottom up governance (ultimately with everything open to public
scrutiny) renders the political spectrum obsolete. In fact the only
thing the political spectrum serves to do is polarise the nation by
perpetuating the belief that it is not possible to create solutions that
serve everyone...it must be either/or. This is a logical absurdity in
context of Direct Democracy being the official structure of governance
as the needs and wants of the nation don't need to be labelled, just
heard and acted upon in the most balanced and empowering ways possible."

"Or perhaps its all of the above [DD is Left or Right?].
We have found that elected representatives and governments will
commission deliberative processes because of ideology: those on the
Right see a group of individuals capable of making decisions rather than
a paternalistic government, while those on the Left see everyday people
taking power back from established and moneyed donor/lobbyist
interests. Moreover most elected people on all sides
hold a view that “if people could only see all the facts they would
agree with our side of politics” – a good deliberative process delivers
on the promise of seeing citizens consume a much greater depth of
information than they do in today’s representative/vox pop democracy.
It’s fair to note that we advocate deliberative processes rather than
direct democracy though."

Friday, December 6, 2013

"Those
who work for direct democracy show humility by working for the humble
instead of the elite, and by not imposing our own views. It shows faith
in the process as a collective learning experience including learning
from making mistakes. Politicians usually cover up mistakes because
their "brand" could be damaged. In the Zapatista communities in Chiapas,
Mexico, each village chooses by direct democracy, including how much
private ownership and how much collective ownership. This is about what
works not ideology."

"I
share the opinion that direct democracy is not a "classical" political
doctrine, so it can not be label neither as left or right. Instead, is
more of a way of organizing the society and returning the power to the
people. This is just in the same way that the French revolution for
example changed the monarchy into a republic as a way to rule a state.So,
in my opinion, any political party that supports direct / participatory
democracy is an activist in the field of the way a state is organized
and not in the field of making the social and economic policies. Thus,
it will have a limited role in time, with a precise goal of changing the
state`s Constitution (the primary law) in order to create the tools for
the people to rule themselves. Once this goal is achieved, the party
should dissolve itself."(...)"As
society develops and new ways of human interaction and communication
arise, new models of ruling and organizing the society should arise as
well. And so it seems. Like a new bud coming out of a seed, so the DD
makes its first steps into the political arena.My only
question is how can we act like responsible gardeners and guide its
growth correctly. If I may ask you, what is the best way to approach the
dissemination of the concept to the masses? How do you teach a child
(the people) to recognize his power, and most important, to use it in a
constructive way?"